The Mountains Trilogy (Boxed Set)

by Phoebe Alexander

  “Well?” Rachel asked expectantly. “Are we gorgeous or what?”

  “And you’re sure you want purple, right?” Sarah questioned, “Not the deep red we talked about?”

  Rachel nodded. “I thought the red might be too clashy with the rocks in Garden of the Gods. The purple is perfect! ‘Purple mountains’ majesty!’” she quoted from the patriotic song, which was penned by Katharine Lee Bates during a summer she spent teaching in Colorado Springs.

  Sarah laughed, “Of course. Well, I love the cut. I feel beautiful!”

  As if reading her earlier thoughts, Rachel remarked, “Just wait till James sees you in that, Lovechop! Then he’ll want to walk you down the aisle for sure.” She winked.

  Sarah could not allow herself to hope that far in the future.

  ***

  Sarah was still shaking her head in disbelief at the text message glowing from her phone. Come to dinner with me tonight? Want to celebrate. She reread it multiple times to make sure it was really from James and not Pawel.

  Sure. What did you have in mind? Can’t stay out too late on a school night, she replied.

  NP. I’ll pick you up at 6.

  Sarah barely had enough time to grab a quick shower and throw on her slim black pencil skirt, tall black leather boots and a low cut wine-colored sweater. She surveyed her appearance in the full length mirror on her closet door before heading out. She felt bloated and puffy, having picked up a few pounds over the holidays and...ugh...retaining water from my period. I don’t know what he could possibly see in me, she thought, shaking her head to try to get the image of her reflection out of her mind.

  Owen called up to announce that James had arrived before she had a chance to fret any more about her weight. She traipsed down the stairs to see Owen showing James some of his LEGO creations. She studied him for a moment before he noticed she’d arrived. James is either completely enthralled by Owen or one hell of an actor, she observed, grabbing her coat from the hooks near the back door. “Ready?” she called to James who looked startled until he drank in her image and a wide grin spread across his face.

  She instructed Owen and Abby, “Be good. I’ll be back before bedtime.”

  “You look beautiful,” he said and kissed her on the cheek. She turned just in time to see Abby wink at her.

  Because it was a weeknight, the Italian restaurant James chose was fairly empty. They shared a booth constructed of rich, dark wood in the back corner. The waiter looked familiar, and Sarah was fairly certain he had been one of her students a few semesters back. James waited till after they ordered and were served their wine before telling her what they were celebrating. “I want to propose a toast,” he smiled, his eyes glinting in the soft, low lighting.

  “Right,” Sarah said, her nerves tingling and weary from several hours spent reviewing all the possibilities. “So what are we celebrating?”

  “I have some exciting work news,” James explained. He was enjoying the expectant look emanating from Sarah’s dark eyes, watching her suspense mounting. When he was sure she was nearly ready to explode from anticipation he announced, “I got a promotion.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, that’s wonderful news! What kind of promotion?” She felt warm pride surge through her for a few moments and then...it hit her like a ton of bricks: he’s going to leave. She tried to keep the color from draining from her face. Every intuitive fiber of her being was crying out that she was going to lose him.

  He didn’t seem to notice. “I’m being commissioned, he said, beaming. She’d never seen him so animated.

  “What does that mean exactly? I’m sorry, I’m completely ignorant when it comes to military matters,” she apologized.

  “I’m being commissioned to be an officer. It’s a pretty big deal. There will be a ceremony, which is what I wanted to ask you about.”

  Sarah’s synapses were confused, unsure which direction to fire. Relief? Is there something more? “What is it, darling?”

  “I want you to come to my commissioning ceremony,” he smiled, “If you can, I mean. You could do the pinning....if you wanted to.”

  Her head was spinning. She had no idea what he was talking about, but she nodded. “When is it?”

  “Next week,” he replied. “It’ll be on campus, hopefully not during one of your classes. Owen and Abby can come too if they want.”

  “Oh, James, this is really exciting!” It is, right? she thought. She would have to do some research to find out what the ceremony was...what pinning meant. He certainly looks as if...she studied his face...he’s glowing with excitement. Boyish and on top of the world. Like he’s just been crowned king. “Oh! I should propose the toast!” she gushed, raising her glass, the red wine swirling with her sudden movement.

  He grinned and raised his glass slowly, deliberately, his head tilted and waiting expectantly to hear her smooth voice sprinkle a silvery shower of admiration over him. Sarah could feel his pressure bearing down on her, wrapped around his grin...and when am I at a loss for words? she asked, wondering where the hell her Auto Pilot was.

  She cleared her throat and went for it: “Here’s to the US Army for recognizing talent, strength, drive and initiative when they see it. Who says ‘Military Intelligence’ is an oxymoron?” She paused for a moment to giggle at her joke, feeling her natural ease finally return. And then with her most earnest sincerity: “And here’s to you, James, my Officer and Gentleman, with my very best wishes for a long, fruitful and illustrious career. I’m so proud of you, darling!”

  She nearly felt the heat of his cheeks blushing as his wine glass clinked against hers. He couldn’t even respond, his eyes were crinkled so deeply with happiness. The wine exploded against her tongue and seemed to be absorbed directly into her bloodstream. She didn’t know what was more dizzying: the alcohol or the smile that radiated from his face.

  He suddenly grew serious and reached for her hand, which he held in his across the table. “There’s one more thing you should know,” he said, his fingers lacing through hers.

  And now her heart began to pound. This time he didn’t make her wait. “I’m deploying in June.”

  Her face was blank as she struggled to keep the emotion from being painted across its canvas. Finally a word managed to form itself on her lips: “Where?” She flashed back...her cheek on his chest, his arm around her...This man is going to break my heart someday. She always knew he would leave. I knew this was coming. Shit.

  “Oh, Sarah,” he whispered, recognizing the emotions that were suspending her in midair. “Please don’t.” He waited for her eyes to meet his. They were round and wide with uncertainty. “Please, Sarah...this is a good thing. This is a great opportunity for me. It’s only for nine months.”

  “Where?” she repeated, this time her voice stronger.

  “Afghanistan.”

  ***

  The next week was a blur. Sarah’s Auto Pilot was in high gear, steering her through a cycle consisting of office, class and home, requiring very little emotion or thought. She spent the night with Pawel that Friday night and stayed home and watched movies with the kids, Rachel and Thomas on Saturday night. She let Rachel keep her up all night with talk of bouquets, centerpieces, and wedding music.

  She didn’t see James. She didn’t contact him. She reached for the switch in her mind that controlled The James Channel and tried desperately to turn it off.

  Finally it was Tuesday, the day of the commissioning ceremony, and Sarah was forced to flip the channel back on full blast. She walked across campus that afternoon in the late January chill, the sun already beginning to sink toward the horizon at four in the afternoon. Everything was washed in dappled golden rays, but it was a cold, unforgiving winter sunshine, the kind that constantly reminded one how far away summer was. By summer, he will be gone, she sighed, a thought that chilled her more than the air.

  She walked up to the auditorium and the memory of trudging up the same steps in fuchsia flip flops five months before materialized inside her. The
night we met, she remembered. I would have never envisioned all this coming from that single question he posed to me after the panel on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. She couldn’t shrug away the butterflies that were starting to flit between her ribs. Just a tiny moment that changed me forever, she thought. A tiny, solitary moment.

  James was already there, decked out in his dress uniform, his shoulders impossibly broad, the line from his shoulders down to his shiny patent-leather clad feet impossibly sharp. Despite the stiff looking ensemble, he looked relaxed conversing with the other officers, his superiors. There was a softness around his eyes that Sarah recognized, that the uniform couldn’t disguise.

  Now that she knew him so intimately, his usually well-concealed tenderness was impossible to hide from her. She looked at him through such different eyes than she had five months before. He had gone from an amorphous figure to a three dimensional one, one that made her heart react in ways her brain was not able to control.

  His peripheral vision finally picked up on her presence. He turned toward her, excusing himself from the conversation in which he was engaged. He let her give him a chaste hug. His students were present and giving him knowing glances which made Sarah giggle. She wondered if they had an overlap in students, but she didn’t recognize any of the faces. He showed her where to sit and then rejoined the officers.

  The ceremony got underway but Sarah was so lost in thought she didn’t even hear the words. She watched James cross to the front of the room. So formal. She tried to watch his body as if he was a stranger, but she couldn’t help but think about what was under that uniform. How she knew every muscle, every freckle and mole, every nuance of his physical structure. How he looked with his eyes closed. The way his biceps bulged when his hands were behind his head. The shape of his navel. The pattern of his chest chair.

  And then she thought about what she knew of his insides, what had taken her much longer to uncover. His vulnerable side. The way he can be self-deprecating at times but is usually so damn confident that he borders on cocky. And what about the books? All the freaking books! How he spouts off some historical or scientific fact and completely catches me off guard. What about his conviction? The fact that he is willing to give up his life for our country. The way he poses philosophical questions out of the blue, the way someone else might ask what I think of a recent movie. How sometimes I look into those blue eyes and feel like I am staring into his soul.

  Suddenly she was being called to the front of the room for the pinning. She rose, on Auto Pilot, and walked almost as formally and stiffly to the stage as he had. She was handed the pin for one side and the officer did the other. As soon as she touched his body, even through the thick uniform jacket, she felt his heat absorb into her flesh. He stared straight ahead, but she could tell he noticed the electricity.

  There is something between us...call it electric, call it chemical...something that defies logic and reality. And that is why I am here and not walking away right now.

  This man is going to break my heart, she reiterated, feeling her intuition grab ahold of her and shake her, begging her to be strong, to find her pragmatic side, to steel herself against the fall. She’d climbed so high...it was going to be a long way down.

  ***

  Owen’s birthday fell that weekend. Sarah’s house was full of rambunctious ten and eleven-year-old boys along with the accompanying stomping feet, loud voices, nerf guns and video games. Abby had wisely escaped to Chloe’s house for the evening, but Sarah’s mother and Rachel had come to provide moral support and an attempt to balance out all the testosterone. Rachel volunteered to clean up the kitchen after the devastation was mostly complete and Kathy and Sarah went to check for damages to the rest of the house.

  Kathy was scooping wrapping paper and smashed soda cans up into the trash bag she was holding. Suddenly an innocent “How are things with James?” was tossed out into the space between them.

  Sarah immediately bristled. She usually didn’t mind sharing details of her love life with her mother or with Rachel, but lately she’d wanted to hold those details close to her heart. Out of fear, she guessed. Fear that I will really have to admit what he’s doing to me.

  Kathy Lynde wisely sensed the answer in her daughter’s silence. “It’s okay, you don’t have to talk about him if you don’t want to. It’s been awhile since I saw you affected by a man though, Sarah, and I have to tell you, if I’m being honest,” her dark eyes grew wide behind her thick-lensed glasses, “I’m kind of worried about you.”

  “Oh, Mom,” Sarah brushed her off. “I’m almost 37 years old. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Matt and Daniel and whatever other asshats I’ve been with, it’s that I can stand on my own two feet. I’m my own person and my feelings are my responsibility, not a man’s.”

  “That’s my girl,” Kathy smirked, knowing full well that Sarah’s response was a defense mechanism. She was familiar with her daughter’s drive to avoid admitting any kind of weakness.

  “Mom,” Sarah said after a moment, stripping down that wall she’d put up, “he’s deploying.” She barely got the word out of her mouth before the tears unexpectedly choked her, forcing her words back into her throat.

  “Oh, honey,” Kathy sighed. She put down the trash bag and gathered her daughter up into her arms. The simple embrace released the floodgates and soon Sarah was sobbing onto her mother’s shoulder.

  She finally caught her breath and was able to ease the words out, words tinged with anger and directed inward, “I don’t know why I’m so upset. I knew all along this would happen. I knew from day one, Mom, from the first time I laid in his arms.”

  “Sometimes that doesn’t matter,” Kathy replied soothingly. “Sometimes you must see what’s behind that door, sometimes you are just compelled...as if by invisible forces. I’ve felt it, sweetheart, I know.” She brushed her daughter’s hair back from her eyes and tucked it behind her ear. Then she wiped away a stray tear that had clung to her reddened cheeks.

  Kathy Lynde had more empathy in her pinky finger than most people had in their entire souls. Sarah wiped her eyes and nodded. “And it’s just like that. It’s like I can’t help myself. I can’t stay away. When I’m with him, I’m on top of the highest mountain. And when I’m not, I’m in the lowest valley.” She shook her head, irritated that she couldn’t articulate her feelings without resorting to metaphors. “I’ve never felt this way before....I feel so out of control! I didn’t even know it was possible to feel this way.” She looked into her mother’s eyes. “I am not used to feeling irrational,” she managed a laugh.

  “I was like that with your father,” Kathy said. “And I was too young to be able to look at my feelings objectively like you can, to recognize that you’re being irrational. I didn’t know I was going to get hurt. That I would lose him. But you do know, and it’s okay, Sarah. There’s only one thing you can do.”

  Sarah’s eyes widened, wondering if there could really be an answer to this unending torment. “What’s that?”

  Kathy took her daughter’s hands into her own and looked into her face, marveling at the eeriness of staring into the eyes of a younger twin of herself. “Just enjoy every minute you get with him, sweetheart. Every single minute is pure gold. You may never feel this force again. I think some people go through their entire lives without feeling it.” When she smiled at this thought, her eyes crinkled and creased. “To feel this power, what you feel right now for James? This is divine, Sarah. This is a gift. Embrace it. Learn from it. Relish it.”

  Sarah nodded and hugged her mother tightly. Kathy Lynde, wisest woman on the planet, had just given Sarah’s heart the words it had been trying to tell her head for the last five months.

  ***

  Chapter Fifteen

  Rock Climbing

  February was a wild tease, provocatively flirting with warmer temperatures even though everyone in the mid-Atlantic region knew it would be a long while before Spring settled in for good. Sarah had stuffed her winter coat at
the back of the closet, knowing full well she’d have to dig it back out again. She was burning to be outdoors, to be active, to burn off the ten pounds she’d gained hibernating during the winter. Her students seemed to share her restlessness as they counted down to spring break. Everywhere she went, Sarah noticed the masses of humankind were beaten down by the meteorological roller coaster, desperately craving stability.

  Pawel and Sarah had gone on a bike ride and picnic one unseasonably warm Sunday afternoon. The park was deserted except for a few brave squirrels and a chipmunk or two. The trees were still bare and the ground was firm but thawing. A dampness clung to everything, coupled with a chill when the sun hid behind the clouds. They sat on top of a picnic table tossing bread crumbs to the squirrels and attracting the attention of a few winter birds.

  Sarah took off her knit cap and shook out her dark hair all around her. Her skin was starting to feel itchy in the damp chill. “I need to get home soon,” she remarked, interrupting Pawel’s staring contest with a nearby squirrel.

  He took her gloved hand into his. “Your cheeks are flushed the most delicious shade of rose,” he offered. “They look like apples and I want to bite them.”

  Only Pawel could say that with a straight face, Sarah mused. “Is that so?” she retorted. “Well, no one is stopping you!” She tossed him a teasing smirk.

  He turned toward her and with one finger lifted her chin in the direction of his mouth. He grazed his teeth against her cold flesh and she felt his heat searing through her, replaced by a chill as the saliva evaporated. Then his lips were on her, soft and gentle, his facial hair brushing against her. The wind whipped through her hair, throwing it into the breeze and making it flap against both of their faces like a dark veil.